Assigning a course

Assignments and how to assign a course

🎭 Differences between Courses and Assignments

After a course has been created it's time to give users access to a version of that course, this is where Assignments come in. There are some important distinctions between Courses and Assignments:

• Courses group together items from your library

• Assignments are a version of that course set to a user group

• Once an assignment is created, changes to the source course will not be reflected in the assignment unless you pull a new version in - Assignment versioning

• There can be multiple assignments of the same course.

Differences between an assignment and a course

Video walkthrough for courses and assignments

🧠 Assignments are a snapshot of the course at the moment it was assigned. Once a course has been assigned you cannot users who have that assignment will not see changes made to that course unless you pull a new version in - Assignment versioning

✍️ Create an Assignment

Navigate to the Assignments page via the main menu, and look for the Set assignment button in the top corner.

Assignments page

On the assignment detail page, select the course you'd like to assign and the group you want to create assignments for. From here you can change the name of your assignment to customise it to the group.

Assignment details

⚙️ Configuration

After you have selected the course and group for your assignment you can configure the settings for this assignment

Deadline type

• Indefinite = Users can finish this assignment whenever they want, there is no deadline

• Exact date = Select a date users must have finished this assignment by

• Relative to start = Select a time period that users have to complete the assignment from when they start. This will either be when the assignment is published if they're already in the group, or when they are added to the group once the assignment is published

Manual review

If enabled an educator or admin must pass or fail each assignment. You can set the users who are assigned to review via the Reviewers page on the assignment

Progression type

• Linear and fixed = Students cannot go back and redo items eg quizzes or surveys (they can still go back and view content)

• Linear but flexible = Students can repeat items like quizzes and surveys, content is still locked so they must complete and item to move onto the next.

Certificate

• Enabled = Students will get a system generated certificate upon assignment completion

• Branding = If you have subportals you can choose between the branding of your root or sub-portal

Certificate generation guide

This is very similar to how your certificate will look. Anything circled in pink is interchangeable and the data will be pulled in from your Portal. For example, the image at the top of the certificate will be replaced with whatever image is assigned to your course. The area where it says 'John Smith' will display the name of the person who has completed the assignment. 'GDPR' will be replaced with the course title you assigned and the correct date will automatically be selected. Finally, instead of the Synap logo, your company logo will appear which should already be uploaded in the branding section of your portal.

Once you're happy with the configuration you can publish the assignment by clicking on the Go to Publish button in the top left hand corner of the screen. This will take you to the Version management page.

We recommend using the Preview function on this page to run through the assignment as a student would so you can ensure it is behaving as you want it to.

• Preview assignment will not be visible on the 'Assignment management' page or in exports

• Data will not count towards cohort or question averages

• Manual review of items and whole assignments will not be enforced

Once you're happy with the assignment, click on Publish Assignment.

🎁 Giving new users an active assignment

Once a course has been assigned something called an 'Assignment group' is created. You can find these assignment groups on the main assignments page. Clicking into an assignment group gives you an overview table of each users progress.

To add another user to this assignment group, go to the associated user group, and add in the user from there. New members to that group will automatically get a copy of the assignment at the moment it was assigned. You can access the group directly from the assignment by clicking on the groups name in the top left hand corner of the screen

More on viewing assignments in the article below

Managing assignments & publishing new versions

Revoke an Assignment

If you need to prevent a user from completing and accessing an existing assignment, use the Revoke assignment option when viewing their progress on an assignment. If you change your mind later you can reinstate the same assignment for them to start / resume.

This can be done when viewing an individual assignment or from the assignment management page, in bulk

Users viewing a revoked assignment won't be able to access any items or see any completed items.